household budget/ money

Posted by kilwinning (280 days ago)

Can someone give me some ideas/ advice... We've had our helper for 6 months now. We keep a box in the kitchen with cash for our helper to use to do grocery shopping, pay for miscellaneous items, etc. My helper gets receipts for everything and puts them in the box. On a notepad in the box, I write down any money I add to the box and then every couple of weeks, I go through the receipts and "balance" the money. It's always off by a small amount, but most recently its short by about $100. I don't want to accuse my helper of anything as mistakes can happen on both sides during our daily chaos!

Can some of you tell me how you track household money that your helper uses? I'd prefer that both of us somehow track the money to avoid any awkward conversations in the future...

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Posted by cara (280 days ago)

don't accuse her, just ask her.

There seems to be a little $ missing. Did you by any chance forget to put the change in?

other than that, ask her to write down what she spends it on. some places don't give receipts, like the wet market. If she's buying vegetables and fruit there, then you will have to trust her.

Posted by cara (280 days ago)

or give her a very little notebook and a small pen. when she goes out, she needs to write down what she's spending the $ on immediately.

you could say that you are trying to cut costs and that you would like to know EXACTLY where it is all going, so you need her to do this to help you budget. that way you are not accusing her at all.

Posted by kilwinning (279 days ago)

Thanks Cara, but we are already doing this. She writes down the wet market purchases, other non-receipt transactions in the notebook so that shouldn't be accounting for the discrepancy. As for accusing her, bad choice of words on my part. I wouldn't accuse her, just ask her if she knows why the $ is off. I guess I'll just have to explain about the missing money and that BOTH of us have to agree on the additions and outgoings. If the money doesn't tie up in the future, then she isn't keeping track of her purchases properly.

Posted by missdj (279 days ago)

We do something similar to what you are doing. We have a dish with money (bills and coins) in a drawer,along with a small lined notebook and calculator. I have done columns of DATE, PURCHASE, AMOUNT & BALANCE. I have HER write everything down daily. When she comes home she is to record things. She is also to balance it every few days. At the begining, I checked it every 2 or 3 days,now I do it weekly. It has helped alot and always balances within a couple dollars, and often has a few extra dollars. (anything over, extra, we put in our daughters piggy bank).
We buy diapers and other items from a Chinese shop, who doesn't give receipts, unless u ask. And otherwise, we ask our helper to try to get the person to write down the amount on a piece of paper, as she sometimes forgets about it when she gets home. All is working great for us now.